Wednesday, November 29, 2017

In my blog
titled The
Red Box, I described how Great Britain’s Queen Victoria
liked to place important documents in a red box on her desk. This box served as
a “to-do” box/in-tray; anything that made it into this container was considered
urgent and needed the monarch’s attention right away. Of course, at the
beginning of her reign all sorts of papers and petitions found their way in,
which overloaded and frustrated the queen and her husband, Prince Albert. It
turned out that comparatively few of the items in the box were truly urgent or
even deserved her attention, at all. However, until the documents were sorted
and prioritized, she had to treat them as if they were.

A similar
process happens to most of us at some time or another, when stray thoughts,
memories, daydreams/fantasies or worries drift into the conscious mind when we
are—or should be—busy handling something else. Suddenly, the mind is filled
with these distracting ideas that prevent us from focusing on the task at hand.
Of course, the more we tell ourselves to focus and ignore that pesky idea that
is starting to blossom in our imagination, the more difficult it is to do just
that: Did I buy enough cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving dinner? I need to rent more chairs from the
party-supply store. Should there be a separate kids’ table, or do the children
get to hang out with the grown-ups this year?

In cases like
this, I like to suggest that the intrusive image or thought is being moved into
a metaphoric version of Queen Victoria’s red box, in the subconscious mind. This
suggestion will be literal and direct or metaphoric, depending on the person’s suggestibility.
I remind the individual that this box is only for temporary storage to allow
him or her to continue to work (or play) without interruption. The information
can be easily accessed and retrieved whenever the time is right to address this
issue. Meanwhile, it is being stored safely out of the way until the client can
and wants to deal with it.

The great thing
about this kind of imagery is that even the concept of a red box can easily be
replaced with an object or even an element the person likes better. If you do a
lot of work with computers and on the Internet, perhaps the idea of storing
this information on a cloud or even invisible strands of energy around your
head is more effective. If a memory of a previous family celebration or a fantasy
about who you want to sit beside is particularly distracting, it may feel more
comfortable and safer to metaphorically lock that thought in a metaphoric iron
box. To strengthen this concept, you can even make a motion with your hand to
turn a key in that lock to keep it out of your conscious mind until you want or
are ready to address it.